Will Stevens will race for Caterham alongside Kamui Kobayashi this weekend after his superlicence application was approved by the FIA at the last minute.

The team made the announcement just 10 minutes before the official FIA deadline for nominating drivers for the weekend. Stevens tested at Silverstone on both 2013 and 2014, logging 1100kms.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to be getting this opportunity and am very grateful to everyone involved at Caterham F1 Team for giving it to me,” said Stevens. “I feel ready for the challenge of my F1 debut and look forward to working as part of the Team in a race environment after all the work we’ve done together previously in the tests I’ve completed and back at Leafield in the sim. Hopefully this will be something we will be able to carry through to the 2015 season together.”

“We know Will very well through his involvement in the Caterham Racing Academy,” said Gianluca Pisanello, Caterham F1 Team Head of Engineering Operations. “And more importantly he has done a vast amount of time in our simulator, completing around 10,000km, which has built his experience both of this year’s car and with the engineering team that are going to Abu Dhabi.

“In addition, his 2014 test at Silverstone in our current car, where he completed over 500kms, was very successful and his race pace was very good. As a result, he was one of our best candidates for this race weekend and we are delighted to have secured his services for our return to the F1 grid. We in fact signed Will last week but have had to wait for confirmation of his Super licence before making our announcement.”